COMMONWEALTH AIR COUNCIL

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27990, 9 June 1956, Page 11

COMMONWEALTH AIR COUNCIL

(From the London Correspondent ot ‘The Press”) LONDON, June 4. The Deputy-Director of Civil Aviation. Sir Arthur Nevill, and Mr T. P Heller, of the Civil Aviation Administration, have arrived in London to represent New Zealand at the fifth meeting of the Commonwealth Air Transport Council this month. The Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, Mr Harold Watkinson, M.P.. will open the conference* There will be an exchange of views on many subjects of civil air transport important to the British Commonwealth.

New Zealand is one of 10 members of the council, the others being the United Kingdom, Australia. Canada, Union of South Africa, India, Pakistan, Ceylon. Colonial Empire, and the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.

The formation of the council was formally announced in the House of Lords by Lord Swinton (then Minister of Civil Aviation) in January, 1945, and meetings have so far been held at London. 1945; Montreal, 1947; Montreal, 1950; and London again in 1953. It was formed as a result of informal Commonwealth conversations in which representatives of Canada. Australia. New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, Southern Rhodesia, India. Newfoundland, and the United Kingdom took part in Montreal in 1944. These informal talks were later continued in London before the council was set up.